Dumfries Market - History

DUMFRIES is a town with a well charted history dating back almost 1,000 years. A constant, unifying presence in the lives of the population throughout those centuries has been the important presence of a market. The rights and responsibilities of the townspeople in running that market were enshrined in Robert the Third’s Charter of April 28 1395, although there is ample evidence the town enjoyed such commerce for many, many years before. In fact the market place in Queensberry Square predates the Charter by hundreds of years.

It also predates the homes and shops which sprung up around the site at the top of the hill overlooking the River Nith.

Detailed mentions of the market place turn up regularly from the early days of town records.

G W Shirley, for example, reproduces a burgage map of the town in 1482 which clearly shows the market place.

Shirley also locates the town’s earliest market “on the hill to the north of the town” and speculates it may have been of “ancient origin as a border market on neutral ground” which elevates its historical important.

Respected local historian, the late Alf Truckell, wrote in his forward to the reprint of McDowall’s History of Dumfries, that Queensberry Square was the market place in the 1500s.

In that period the Market Cross became a focal point in the town, the place where public announcements were made.

And that that time, the town regulations demanded market stallholders had “a full kit of weapons at their stalls” for defence of the town and law enforcement. On 16th July, 1621, James VI signed a Charter which gave the town the right to hold a market on two days each week. That has never been legally challenged. Queens berry Square and the High Street continued to be the heart of the market and the heart of the town.

In the later part of the 20th century a market in the Whitesands began to develop on the back of the traditional cattle market which had been held their for centuries. Traders moved away from the High Street. However, with the disappearance of the cattle market, the trends are being reversed. Over the past eight years the Whitesands market has visibly declined as traders returned to their traditional home in the High Street.

Now the thriving town centre market hosts a variety of traders including fruit and vegetables, clothing, shoes, pet products, mobile phone accessories, bric-a-brac and collector’s items, books, bags, local food products, crafts, Queen of the South football accessories, charity stalls, rugs and carpets, decorative household items, smoking accessories, etc.

During the last five years the town centre market has been run by Town Dynamics Limited, a local company which employees local labour and offers services to the many local stallholders as well as those who come from further afield.

As John Dowson of Town Dynamics puts it: ”We are carrying on a tradition which goes back one thousand years to the very formation of the townscape of Dumfries and we prove weekly that Dumfries is still very much a market town.”